Homicides up more than 50 percent in January, overall crime down 20 percent

Tribune photo illustration

Murders up more than 50 percent in January, overall crime down 20 percent

Murders up more than 50 percent in January, overall crime down 20 percent (Tribune photo illustration)

Jeremy GornerTribune reporter

Homicides in Chicago have risen sharply so far in January compared with a year earlier, continuing a trend that began over the last few months of 2011, police records show.

In a telephone interview Monday, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy noted that Chicago had gone the last five days without a single homicide, but he acknowledged for the first 29 days of January, homicides rose to 40, up from 26 for the same period a year earlier, more than a 50 percent jump.

The increase follows an upward trend in homicides citywide in the last three months of 2011. In that final quarter of the year, homicides totaled 115, compared with 92 homicides for the same period in 2010, a 25 percent increase, according to city crime statistics.

McCarthy said much of that increase was the result of a bloody 17-day stretch from October into November. The overall homicide rate fell a bit in 2011, compared to the previous year.

The homicide category was the only crime category up in the first month of 2012 with overall crime down by about 20 percent, McCarthy said.

The superintendent continued to express confidence that homicides would go down when shootings fall. So far in January, the number of shootings is identical to the same period last year at 140.

When asked what accounted for January’s spike in homicides, McCarthy replied: “We’re at 73 percent murder-by-gunshot right now, which means that the other categories have stacked up…stabbings, asphyxiation.”

But Michael Shields, president of the Fraternal Order of the Police, suggested the increase in homicides could be the result of the mild winter, but McCarthy laughed at that explanation.

Shields maintained that if the department takes credit for five days without a single homicide, it must be prepared to take the blame when homicides rise.

“If they’re going to take credit for the good, they have to take credit for the bad,” he said.

University of Chicago professor Jens Ludwig cautioned against reading too much into statistics over such a short period of time, saying there can be a lot of fluctuation year-to-year.

At an unrelated news conference Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel highlighted Chicago’s continuing gang problems as the source of the continuing concern over the homicide rate.

“Chicago has a problem unlike any other major city given the size of our gangs.,” the mayor said. “… Nobody can be content, but we are making progress in the right things that are necessary to bring a level of safety to our streets.”

McCarthy recently introduced a new strategy to combat violence in the Englewood and Harrison police districts, two of the more dangerous parts of the city, by calling for the saturation of officers in hot spots within those districts for a lengthy periods of time.

Over roughly the first half of January, many of the city’s homicides occurred in those two districts, McCarthy said. But since the department implemented its strategy in those neighborhoods, the situation has improved, he said.

McCarthy also pointed to the drop in overall crime in January as a promising trend. “If the other stuff was going off the charts, then I’d be a lot more concerned than I am,” he said.